Hello, this is the fourth report for the project. First, I d like to
apologize for being late, I took a short trip over the weekend and
missed the deadline. This time I ve good news for my project. As
expected I ve made the necesary changes to have Eucalyptus support ARM
images. The approach was extending and exposing an arch field that
will be used by libvirt s XML domain file. I m working currently on
having the involved functions working with the new extension and I
expect to have this done over the middle of the next week.
What was done so far
- Extended the ncInstance_t struct on util/data.h adding the archId
parameter. This struct keeps the information regarding a node (nc),
say RAM, Kernel, etc. Currently it has no way to set an arch in order
to be used later.
typdef struct ncInstance_t
...
char reservationId[CHAR_BUFFER_SIZE];
char userId[CHAR_BUFFER_SIZE];
char archId[CHAR_BUFFER_SIZE]; // arch field added
int retries;
...
The Eucalyptus team was OK with this approach that I ve proposed few
weeks ago. For all my changes the approach is maintain compatibility
with existing features.
We still have to define if we are setting a default value, say amd64,
or keep it unset until the user sets one. For now we will be supporting
amd64 and arm as valid fields.
- Modified the allocate_intance() function to support the archId
field. This involved adding a new parameter and detecting whether its
present and setting de value accordingly. This function is later used
by the doRunInstance() function in node/handlers_kvm.c
- Modified the involved functions that are called by the KVM handlers
and result in passing parameters to the XML file generator for being
used by libvirt s and KVM and have the image running under
Eucalyptus. The new parameters and field are not required and only
being used if they are set with a value. The archId parameter has been
added as the last one, so existing function calls can work. This could
be rearranged later, but will involve a more extensive revision with
Eucalyptus developers.
- I ve set a git local repo in order to keep track of the changes to
Eucalyptus. Since this part is a sort of a Eucalyptus branch I took
this approach. Steffen and I are discussing whether to release this as
a pkg-eucalyptus branch (as dpatch, using existing packaging). Either
way I m putting the diff files form my git repo over the wiki and will
put them on my site too. I plan to use git-svn in order to send them
later to the pkg-eucalyptus repo once we are settled with this.
- Updated the project s wiki[1] page with information regarding all that s
involved on my work, so it can be re-played or resumed later.
1- http://wiki.debian.org/SummerOfCode2011/BuildWithEucalyptus/ProjectLog
What I plan to to over the next weeks
-
- Finish the modifications to the relevant functions. Expected dealine:
next week.
- Do integration tests:
Write a test program, there s an example under node/ that could be
helpful.
Generate the XML domain definition from Eucalyptus functions. The
full cycle: handler_kvm -> allocate_instance -> get_instance_xml ->
have the XML file properly generated -> qemu-kvm runs the instance
using the proper emulator (arm in our case).
- Test runnning the image I ve worked on the project s begining.
- Fixing bits and cooperate with the pkg-eucalyptus team on the
packaging bits.
- Talk to Eucalyptus so they adopt our patches.
- Rock and roll :)
What would be nice to have after the project ends
-
- The Debian packaging *needs* work. I ve already discussed this on the
pkg-eucalyptus mailing list. I ve also committed myself to help on
that side even after the SoC ends.
- Talk with upstream and Ubuntu to coordinate the packaging efforts and
modifications to the software.
- Get adopters to use our work :)
By now, few weeks about to finish the SoC, I can say that it s been a
good experience and as I stated I m planning to keep maintaing/working
on the software after that. I ve already joined the pkg-eucalyptus team
and plan to contribute actively. I m sad I didn t managed to get Debconf
this year, time was a constraint again, hopefully we can meet in 2012! I
guess that all by now!
Best regards,
Rud
During the past Debconf,
Joerg borrowed my laptop. I'd
told him that he could basically wipe all files if he wanted to, since I
had a full backup at home. With that, I mostly meant to say that he
could reinstall the box, or add or remove packages as much as
he wanted to.
What I didn't mean for him to do was to give it back to me
with a completely wiped hard disk that it wouldn't even boot off of
anymore, but that's what he did. Oh well.
So I hadn't done the restore yet, last week, since I'd been busy
doing other things. Now, my backup consisted of a file called 'mbr' of
2KB; a file called 'backup.tar.bz2' of 66G, and an LVM volume called
'windows' that was written with 'dd if=/dev/sda1
of=/dev/lvm/windows'[1]. Meaning, I could do a restore, but it was
somewhat more involved than just running bacula and allowing it to do
its stuff for a while.
I briefly considered mounting the external USB disk on which the
backup was written to my other laptop, and streaming everything over the
network, but quickly discarded that idea for speed issues. Instead, I
created 4GB NBD export on that other laptop, ran d-i with my partman-nbd
on the to-be-restored laptop, installed Debian to the NBD device, booted
off of that, and could then do a restore while having a fully functional
system. With the sole gotcha that I couldn't disconnect it from the
network until the restore was complete, but that's not
insurmountable.
The 'dd' restore has finished in the mean time, I'm still waiting for
tar to complete its job. Once that's finished, I'll probably have to
refresh grub to the internal hard disk, and then I'll be able to boot
it.
I hope.
Having said that, doing a bare-metal restore while booting off of an
NBD device is quite practical. I mean, sure, I could have downloaded a
live system from the network somewhere, but that would've taken forever,
would probably have had an impact on performance of the system while it
was running, and overall isn't very ideal IMO. On the other hand, an NBD
device is much faster than a local CD or DVD, can be written to without
requiring a RAM disk, doesn't need squashfs to get you to reasonable
sizes, and as far as the kernel is concerned it's just a local hard
disk.
If the above paragraph sounds like I'm proud, then that's because I
am. Two years ago, doing this would have involved much more manual work.
Today, I had a system running root off NBD in minutes.
[1] Yeah, so my car has a builtin TomTom GPS that I can't do
updates for under Linux, AFAIK. Plus some other stuff. Sue
me.
Wrestling (WWE) is entertaining. The way the ww[ef] superstars (Especially the ones like Undertaker, Triple H) are presented is fun to watch. Or the kind of high flying maveuveurs the wwf superstars are able to perform, it really is super cool. The only catch is - it is not a sport. The feuds are all pre-defined to juicen things up.I recently came to know of UFC. I hope some day they start airing it in my part of the world. I'm still getting acquianted to MMA, but it really is an awesome sport. This is one forum which does show size does not matter. Was watching Royce Gracie's matches from UFC 4. Awesome matches clearly showing the skill with which one can beat any size or power. The final was in between a pro-jiu jitsu vs pro-wrestler. Gracie won it but was given a tough fight by the wrestler.That brings me to 
One of the many points that came up during the BOF is that many people Want to help but don t know where to start or how to go about it. It s a challenge for the Debian Women project to find a way to allow these people to become involved in Debian through Mini projects or something like that.
Another of the subjects that was brought up was the Debian Women mentoring project, which has been going on for quite a while now, but lacks enough publicity. So, we need to reach more people about it, and maybe also improve it with some templates, similar to the New Maintainer templates, so that mentees that don t know where to start have some sort of general path to follow.
Raphael: You created 
After 
The first day of the Desktop Summit was yesterday, Saturday, August 6. I loved it and gave a presentation. There are two very different stories I can tell on the topic of gender equality in
free software. I'll start with the bad.
The construction, deployment, and use of software involves a number of roles.
I do not have an exhaustive list, but I have a couple in my list that
seem to be surprising to some developers.
In the traditional Unix (mainframe) model, there are three roles:
Today is our "historical" Spongebob (the one you can see 
The above plot was produced in a 
I got a call from Mum today to inform me that my grandmother had passed away
last night, Brisbane time, at 94 years of age.
FreedomBox activities at Debconf11
I spent the last two weeks of July 2011 in Banja Luka. The occasion was the
annual 
Sometimes it helps if your baby thinks it is a good idea to get you up at 05:00 in the morning, so I was able to do some listmaster stuff today. I worked on several bugs and I added the following new mailinglists:
